What does social conflict actually cost a mining company – not in reputation, but in dollars? Sarah is joined by Doron Tadmor, who recently completed his PhD studying how mining companies navigate stakeholder and political risk with indigenous communities.
The conversation centres on Doron’s paper in Resources Policy, which examined 28 large-scale mining projects in Peru and identified $31.9 billion in conflict-related costs – 93% of it from lost productivity due to blockades and suspended operations. But the more interesting finding is on the other side: companies that invest early in proactive community engagement see significantly lower costs over time.
Sarah and Doron dig into what that engagement actually looks like in practice, why Doron thinks the industry should move past the idea of a “social license to operate” toward genuine “social integration,” and why understanding a community’s history with past mining projects matters as much as understanding the geology. It’s a much needed conversation that puts hard numbers behind an argument many have made for years: doing right by communities and doing right by the business are actually the same strategy.
Read Doron’s papers below:
- https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41267-025-00778-y
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301420726001893
Produced by Critical Productions. Sponsored by Satarla.
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